


listening right

by CopperCaravan



Series: Mass Effect Prompt Fills [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone is Sad but they'll be ok, F/M, Fera Shepard, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:54:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a fill for a tumblr prompt: Fera Shepard + "I love you," muffled, from the other side of a door<br/>beginning of ME2</p>
            </blockquote>





	listening right

**Author's Note:**

> Since I wasn’t specifically told *not* to write about Jeff, I wrote about Jeff. Because I have no self-control and “I love you’s” that aren’t necessarily romantic are very, very important to me.

This is not the Normandy, she decides. Not _her_ Normandy. Not Jeff’s.

Can’t be. Because their Normandy wasn’t like this. The Captain’s Quarters wasn’t two floors above her crew. There was no horrible gaping window above her bed. The office by the mess wasn’t filled with Cerberus intelligence. Hell, the whole ship wasn’t filled with Cerberus intelligence.

And the emergency door to the cockpit was never closed.

That’s the worst, by far.

That first night—hell, that first night she’s barely able to drag herself out of her closet and into the CIC at all. When she’s faced with a shut door, she doesn’t really know what to do. Jeff’s never—well, it isn’t like he’s locked her out or anything but... It feels wrong to just waltz right in, feels wrong to even knock. Maybe he wants to be alone, _(maybe he doesn’t think I’m Shepard either_ — _no, that’s not true, shut up, shut up)_ , maybe he’s actually sleeping for once. So she turns on her heel and goes back up to “her” cabin and sleeps curled up in the corner of her shower.

It’s the same the next night. And the night after that. And the night after that.

It’s hard, during the day, not to ask, not to wonder if he misses late night card games and watching old movies on the nav screen and having his ass handed to him when they played flight sims they weren’t supposed to have downloaded in the first place. She misses it. But she... well, she’s only just come back, only been away for what feels like days. He’s had two years to miss her. Two years to stop missing her. Two years to watch Cerberus rebuild her. Two years to wonder if it would be _Shepard_ that woke up or... something else. And less than a week to decide.

He doesn’t flinch away during the day, when she stands at the back of his chair or later, when she puts her hand on his shoulder or later still, when she thumps the brim of his hat upward to fuss with his hair. He still knows how to take a joke. He still likes figs and she still doesn’t. His snark is almost as sharp as before, and nine times out of ten, he can even meet her eyes. During the day, things are almost normal, though this “Normandy” never lets them forget that they are alone together on a Cerberus ship.

When it’s been a week—a week of sleeping anywhere but her bed, a week of barely sleeping at all, a week of nights spent by herself and no folded card games to rid herself of those disgusting fig nutribars—she drags herself onto the elevator and through the CIC and stands in front of the closed door of the cockpit. She knocks. She knows he is awake.

“I love you, Jeff.” It’s never been hard for her to say. Her parents, her brothers—no one left the house or came home from a long day or went to bed without being told they were loved. After the raid, that was the only comfort she had: knowing they knew and her knowing too. It was important. It’s still important. Even before—before Alchera... she should’ve told him then. Should’ve told all of them. She shouldn’t have left them without making sure they knew.

She can hear him shifting in his chair, can hear him let out a breath. She knows he can hear her too. But maybe he can’t; maybe she didn’t say it right.

She turns around and leans against the door, slides onto the floor until she’s comfortably situated. Takes a breath. “Wasn’t your fault, you know,” she says. The Normandy— _their_ Normandy—burning and breaking around them and she didn’t leave him behind. Of course she didn’t. But then she did. She wonders how long he sat in that escape pod, waiting for the Alliance to rescue them, watching the ship burn and fall through the atmosphere, searching for any sign of her, a speck of dust against a dark sky full of other, brighter specks of dust. “And I’m not sorry it happened the way it did. It was worth it, Jeff. It was.”

She _thinks_ she hears him answer. She thinks she hears “It wasn’t.”

So she tries again. “I love you, Jeff.”

She hears the shuffle of his feet along the floor ( _socks,_ she notes), and she hears the grunts and caught breaths and little thumps of him settling against the other side of the door.

He curses. He mutters. “Asshole.”

She hears _Never again._ She hears _I love you too._

“My fish tank is made with bullet proof glass,” she says.

“I guess _Operative Lawson_ mentioned that during the Grand Fucking Tour?” Shepard knows then. He misses the Normandy too. _Their_ Normandy. And he misses card games and old movies and flight sims they weren’t supposed to have downloaded.

“No,” she says. “I shot at it.”

He snorts.

It’s quiet. For a while. She drifts in and out of sleep. Dreams a couple of times, wakes to hear light snores behind the door, dozes off again. At some point, he says “Me—me too. I love you too, Shepard.”

She hears _Shepard._

It won’t be tonight. But maybe tomorrow.


End file.
